The objectives of this research are to understand and improve the corrosion resistance and strength of dental amalgam by changing the formulation and composition of dental alloy. This would give added life to amalgam restorations and thereby, in the long run, mean that dentists could serve more patients. The metal systems Ag-Sn-X (where X is any metal forming an intermetallic with Sn, of which there are about 15) will be investigated. About 25 compositions in each system of interest will be prepared by splat cooling the homogenized alloys. The resulting splat cooled ribbons will be powdered and used for amalgam specimen preparation. Criteria to evaluate the amalgams will be dimensional change during setting, tensile strength, structure and corrosion resistance. Dimensional change will be determined with the use of a Carson-Dice electronic micrometer, tensile strength with the use of an Instron tensile testing machine, structure by x-ray diffraction, optical and electron microscopy, and corrosion resistance by potentiostatic methods.